Recreate using Illustrator

I decided to use an old school photo of my father. I do not know who the photographer is because it is not labeled on the back. This image has been damaged over the years and has many scratches and stains. I scanned the image and used photoshop to clean it up. Then in Illustrator I applied a customized live trace. I still need to play around with it, there is a very noticeable line in the background that I would like to remove. It appeared after the live trace. Any suggestions?

Original:

After editing in photoshop:

After live trace Illustrator: